Oolite Bulletins

The dice have been done...

pic by Cmdr Break.

/me is now imagining fluffy dice which react to side forces… hmm, a point-spring model should suffice.

If I'm not mistaken, the ArcElite fluffy dice do move side to side

I know! What Oolite really needs is to be more like Frontier!

No, thank you Frontier was great for my imagination, but Elite/Oolite have the gameplay. Given all the interesting bits Aegidian keeps adding to Oolite, Frontier is rapidly becoming a fading memory.

Announcement

I do hereby withdraw my wish for a laser cooler.

I've discovered that the witchdrive fuel injectors let me dodge the Wolves long enough for the laser to sort itself out. Bwahahaaa!

How do you get a quotee's name to show up with the quote, by the way?

You press the “quote” button by their post…

Or use [ quote="foo" ].

Thanks! I hadn't noticed the quote button... tunnel vision strikes again.

can we have...

>modular Cargobay _Extension_EQ?

Some larger ships may have room for additional extensions.
The onetime 15 tonne extra seems strangely arbitrary for some ships.

This only aplies to multi-role craft abviously.

>a sightseeing Moray, with standard passenger berths.
and other standard but specialised upgraded craft for sale.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

can we have...

>modular Cargobay _Extension_EQ?

Sensible suggestion!

I'll put it on my todo list.

Maybe you could make a standard 1T extension available, and bods could buy as many as they have room for?

Shipdatas might have to be changed to have a <key>max_cargo_extension</key> variable, but it would certainly make it more customisable.

I think just a

<key>max_cargo_extensions</key>
<integer>number</integer>

determining the number of times a cargobay extension could be bought.

I'm kind of stuck to 15tonnes though, a cargohold extension involves a considderable rebuild of the interior bulkheads/load distribution etc.
It's not a trivial piece of kit you can just plug-and-pray.
Cargo extensions should also only be available only to flexible designs that can cope with it.
A specialised cargohauler like the anaconda will in all probability not have much to gain from a extension, as it in all probability already is optimised for maximum capacity.

Well.
Aegidian has enabled some sort of customisable cargo extendability.
I don't understand how it will work, but it's in.


More stuff we want:

-Identification of ship-blibs on radarscanner (text)+enable/disable swtich.
-a Limited lasercooler (still there )
-More types of weapon, for instance:
-heavy-plasma cannon (or gauss accelerator): low cycle/ medium heat. High damage.
-a Plasma torch/ Flamer: Increases cabin temp of victim, short range continuous beam/flame, high laserheat rise.
-kinetic weapons: slower than light, ammobased, perhaps dumb missiles.

-Anti-missile-missiles or turrets (arc-elite). less reliable than ECM, but costs no extra energy, needs ammo. Works agains any missiletype or enemy ship in close range.
-extended range scanners.
-free view camera- to be fitted on ship, select by [shift-F1], can look around + select targets, without turning ship around. handy for unmaneuvrable ships with lots of missiles.

-holographic dashboard art/snowglobe/pornographic posters.
-winamp(r) plugin for onboard AI.

Just some ideas.

Never one to resist the subject of new toys:

- the previously-mooted Shield Equaliser (especially towards the end of this topic: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=1271)
- a Lepton Beam that subjects the target to a massive blast of charged particles, temporarily disabling it. Divide and conquer for pirate packs.
- a Lepton Bomb. See above. Temporarily disables everything in range. Not sure how we explain the fact that your ship remains unaffected, though!
- Multibeam Laser versions of the current laser types, so I can meet that Wolf Mark II on equal terms They do damage faster, but also heat up faster, in direct proportion to the number of beams.
- a Neutral Plasma Beam that kills anything smaller than a Behemoth with a single hit, but maxes out your laser temperature in one go. I want one for my rear mount, to use whilst running away from 4 Thargoids
- a Multi-Mode Weapons Mount, so I can have a selection of weapons on the same mount. Press a key to switch; limited by the fact that the cooling system is shared, so no switching between your four military lasers to achieve continuous fire
- actually, on second thoughts... a Multibeam Mount so I can fire four military lasers at once Comes with a built-in cooling booster, but still heats up faster than the normal single military laser. Basically, you have to buy the mount and more than one laser for it, so it costs a bomb, but the total damage done to the target before the mount overheats is nonetheless higher than a normal single military laser.

Hmmmm, neilplus, it seems to me many of those suggestions would seriously upset the balance of the game (although a temporary "stun" bomb could be useful).

You run away from only four Thargoids?

have to say i agree with cmdr wonbat on that - oolites not just about getting the best guns to kill everything as fast as possible. it's about developing tactics, knowing when to fight and when to run away.

the thing is... ever played a FPS game where you're set to GodMode? it gets pretty boring... i don't think that oolite should really support that sort of thing. if it was possible just to blast things with a one-hit-kill weapon, there's never any player skill development past a certain point.

i guess if you wanted that one-hit-kill, how about a one shot weapon that costs the earth (and most of the other planets) and can only be re-equipped at behemoths? to make it rare and only to be used in EMERGENCY. perhaps a laser overload (that requires, obviously, a military laser) that, after uses, damages your laser to the point of making it the eqivalent of a pulse laser?

thing is, if you want to have superweapons, you really have to have more trade-offs than just an extortionate price-tag.

meh. just my two cred-chits worth...

As for superweapons - I know it was in original Elite, but I think the energy bomb should go (or at least drastically reduced in power, so maybe it will kill small ships like Sidewinders but only damage something like a Cobra Mk.3). The Q-bomb is a better replacement as it's not an instagib-all weapon and it poses risks for the user.